The .357 S&W Magnum as a Man-Stopper

[Wag]

I'm far from being an expert but it seems that once the bullet leaves the barrel, it doesn't really care about what gun or cartridge was use to launch it. The only thing that matters at that point is the speed and weight of the bullet. Oh, and the rotation, of course. In other words, the same bullet shot out of several different guns with several different cartridge designs is going to perform exactly the same way if the speed and rotation are the same.

I'm interested in seeing your results with this specific scenario.

--Wag--

[pettypace]

Watching with popcorn.

I can’t wait to see your results. I’m guess that mould was intended to be a hollow base? If so you may not be able to seat the bullet out very far as there’s no “bore ride” section. The 357 maximum chamber should help a lot though.

I would use this as a starting point for some load data. 215 grains is mighty close. I do have this 358627 mould handy if you want I’ll mail some to you.
http://www.lasc.us/FryxellLyman358627.htm

Thanks, Mike.

Although I've the used that mould to make some heavy hollow base WC's, the original intent was for hollow point WC's. The hollow point pin is based on info in this excellent post about bullet expansion at relatively low velocities.

You're right about those boolits lacking a "bore ride" section. So, after the first dose of LLA, I eased the nose down into a Lyman .354 sizing die. Not exactly a bore-rider, but just enough to chamber in my Speed-Six with the OAL matching a factory JHP cartridge. As you noted, they fit easily in the .357 Maximum chamber of the little BSA martini. But they won't chamber in a .357 Contender barrel.

At any rate, last night I loaded 10 rounds (cast at about 20:1 so a bit lighter) over 8.0 grains of 2400. And this morning I followed your Fryxell link and found that 8 grains of 2400 probably isn't far off. I'll still take the first shot in the BSA. But I won't pucker up so much doing it.

As my old shooting mentor often said, "More will be revealed at the proper time." But right now I have to load some 30-30 ammo for my disappointingly slow attempt to get back into 200 yard off-hand shooting.

[Michael J. Spangler]

I knew I had seen a similar bullet somewhere.
A little search showed Penn made them and Badman made them.

That might give you a lead for some more load data.

https://www.badmanbullets.com/Online...ing-Pin-Qty-25
One of the reviews states that you can email badman for load data.

This old western powder manual shows some data for both. Maybe you can extrapolate something from that.

https://reloading.org.uk/Reloading%2...ec_1-23-14.pdf

[zarrinvz24]

This idea has been pretty well hashed out in previous years. The idea behind .357 in a man-stopper capacity is velocity. This is why 125gr projectiles seem to work so well, and 110gr in a 38Sp+P comes close. I'd recommend reading the article referenced earlier on the 358627 mold for your start data.

[lar45]

If you post your bullet length, loaded length and barrel length, we can plug it into Quickload for a guestimate.

[pettypace]

If you post your bullet length, loaded length and barrel length, we can plug it into Quickload for a guestimate.

Thanks for the offer.

Bullet Length: 0.915"
Bullet weight: 222.4 grains
Cartridge OAL: 1.570"
Barrel Length: 2.75"

I loaded 8.0 grains of 2400. Fired three from the revolver over a chronograph: 784, 779, and 758 f/s.

I'll be interested to see what Quickload has to say. Thanks!

[lar45]

Thanks for the offer.

Bullet Length: 0.915"
Bullet weight: 222.4 grains
Cartridge OAL: 1.570"
Barrel Length: 2.75"

I loaded 8.0 grains of 2400. Fired three from the revolver over a chronograph: 784, 779, and 758 f/s.

I'll be interested to see what Quickload has to say. Thanks!

Put all of the above into Quickload and it gave:
8.0 grains 787fps @ 29.4kpsi 96% load density

8.4 grains 835fps @ 34kpsi 101% load density

[DGV]

I seem to recall some guys who shot bowling pins using 230-grain wadcutters, which they loaded in a 38 special case.

[MakeMineA10mm]

Of course, this lacks Man-Bites-Dog appeal and won't have the legs of "The .32 S&W Long as a man-stopper" sticky. But here goes, anyway...

On another forum (where they much prefer J-words to boolits) a shooter asked about the "Actual Incapacitation Effectiveness of Full Power .357 Magnum Loads." In particular, the guy wanted to know if the .357 Magnum could do "anything a .38+P or 9mm wouldn't do?"

I suppose the answer to that should be (as an old physics professor often quipped) "intuitively obvious to the casual observer." But when I suggested that a heavy enough bullet might highlight the difference, I was mightily rebuffed. (OK... I did suggest a 230 grain bullet. So, I probably deserved my spanking.)

But it did get me thinking about "The .357 Magnum as a man-stopper" and wondering what effect bullet weight actually has in all this.

About as far as I got (in real life) is to cast some .38 caliber, 230 grain, HPWC boolits at about 40:1. But my question is just how much Bullseye do I dare try as a starting load?

I intend to push this 230 grain boolit far enough down into a .357 Magnum case so I can chamber it in a Speed-Six. I could first try one in a BSA Martini Cadet chambered for .357 Maximum, if that would help.

Well, you asked two questions, really.

The more esoteric/theoretical/opinionated one about a 357 being a manstopper, I would say this: With a cartridge such as a 32, which has little energy, or due to pressure restrictions (like 45 Colt or 45 ACP), is used for self defense, a heavy-slow bullet seems to be an excellent (IMO, the best) combination. On the other hand where you have a lot of velocity available, like the 357 Mag, I’d rather have a medium bullet, which is cooking along as fast as possible. In the 357, I particularly like 140-150gr bullets at high velocity. Likewise in 44 Magnum, I like 250-265gr boolits as fast as they can go (or close to it - I prefer 4227 and 2400 to H-110 with cast). I do not agree with “high energy theory,” which pushes the 125gr bullet in 357 Mag. I’ve seen them spectacularly fail in multiple ways… High pressure cartridges, give me medium-weight bullets at their best velocities…

Now, your second question: I highly discourage Bullseye with 230gr boolits in 357. I’ve loaded and shot a lot of those (mine cast solid nose, not HP), and a medium powder, like Herco, HS-6, AA#5, VV N340, are much better. I’ve also loaded 3-round ball loads in 357, and had to go with W231, because there was so little room in the case. Velocity was L-O-W…

[Bigslug]

Pettypace,

I think what you're concocting - assuming it stays nose-forward - is probably a .35 caliber version of what the .45 Colt and ACP were intended to do: Mostly we're going to shoot the other guy, but sometimes, we might also need to shoot his horse.

Terminally, it's not likely to do anything a quality 1000fps 9mm 147 grain duty load can do, but it MIGHT do it to a little more penetration depth.

[Outpost75]

A 147 FN 9mm which does not tumble, being fired from a 10-inch twist at 1000 fps gives complete pass-throughs on horses and feral cattle. So does a .44-40 or .45 Colt with normal weight, ogival flat nose lead at similar velocity. The locals here ate all of the mastadons centuries ago after killing them with spears, so I don't know what the objective of this exercise is other than mental masturbation .

[Michael J. Spangler]

A 147 FN 9mm which does not tumble, being fired from a 10-inch twist at 1000 fps gives complete pass-throughs on horses and feral cattle. So does a .44-40 or .45 Colt with normal weight, ogival flat nose lead at similar velocity. The locals here ate all of the mastadons centuries ago after killing them with spears, so I don't know what the objective of this exercise is other than mental masturbation .

I’m pretty sure it’s just for fun.

I mean isn’t that 99% of what we do? If we don’t need more cartridges and bullets then we should shut down the forums and leave up a site that explains the 4 or 5 known facts.

Let’s kick back have a drink and watch the thread. Maybe someone will learn something from it.

[HWooldridge]

Back in the late 1970's, one of my cousins owned a .38-44 S&W and was given a half box of the old Hi-Way Master .38 loads by a friend who was a retired highway patrolman. All I can remember about the bullets is that they were copper colored and pointed, with no lead showing. We spent an afternoon on his place near Conroe, Texas - shooting at an old abandoned Chevy truck from the 50's. I have no idea of velocity but those rounds were quite hot, and made Swiss cheese out of the pickup. Shots from the front went through the hood and out the back of the cab, as long as the engine wasn't struck (and they still would bust up the engine casting).

Anyone inside the truck would have been ventilated - I can't vouch for "manstopper" but they definitely would make you leak bodily fluids all over the place...<LOL>

[Michael J. Spangler]

Sounds like the old

HiVeloPen

[pjh421]

Whatever happens, I like it. Messing around with different boolits, powders, etc. It's a fun hobby. We've already got Ranger T, Critical Duty, etc. This isn't necessary and it's not going to be earth shattering. It's just a fun project. Good on ya!

[Recycled bullet]

There are some things that regular 38 + p and 9 mm guns are not able to do safely.

This loading is being fired through 4 and 3/4 in Ruger Blackhawk. It is a 155 grain cast hollow point bullet over a compressed charge of h110. When chronographed through a 2.25in barrel 357 Magnum J frame it averaged 1105 ft per second. Feels like slamming your hand in a car door . I don't know how fast they go from the Blackhawk. I'll tell you I am a lot more comfortable shooting that from that bigger gun.

[atfsux]

I heard that too but a very famous gun writer (I can't remember his name right now!) never believed that stat and always claimed the 158 gr loads were the best. The 357 can give higher velocities than a 38 +P (obviously) and the 9mm so it has to be better-er as a man stopper.

Remember that in the mid 70's and onward, police departments were switching to hollow-point ammunition not so much because it was deadlier or more effective,...although that was indeed a factor,...but it more to do with LIABILITY. Insurance companies run the world and stipulate terms to everyone about everything. Police administrators had no problem with suspects being plugged multiple times if they deserved it and the situation required it. But common old-school 158 grn. round nose lead .38s tended to over-pentrate skinny little dope fiends and sail downrange where they might strike a bus full of nuns. Hollowpoints were more likely to stay in the suspect, and lightweight ones even more so. And while a doped up turd might take a dozen through and through .38s before he fell down and expired, it was discovered that the screaming super light magnum JHPs tended to thwack with authority and require fewer such hits.

For those of us old enough to have been reading about the topic in the early 90s, there was a gun writer by the name of Evan Marshall, a former cop, who started on his own compiling reports of shootings from all over the country and started distilling that data into statistics. He looked for shootings where only a single round was fired into a person's torso and wanted to know if that person ceased their aggression or not. If such a person was incapacitated or collapsed and otherwise unable to continue their behavior that warranted them being shot, he listed this as a "one shot stop". After decades of receiving reports from police agencies all over the country and the world, he felt he finally had enough data to make statements about the effectiveness of a given ammunition in a given caliber. In 1990 or 1991, his data showed that .357 125grn JHP (mostly Winchester, Remington and Federal) had a one shot stop ratio of about 90+%. (It's been decades since I reviewed the data, so I might be off by a few percentage points, so don't scream at me if didn't get it exactly right.)

This sort of data supported the idea that was widely held at the time that stated high velocity JHPs, which violently expanded and created hydrostatic shock in the body, temporarily interfering with the nervous system, which in turn could cause messages from the brain to the muscles holding you upright to blink out and lose balance and fall. The effect was believed to be not as likely on doped up or alcohol-infused persons, who tended to require more hits to put down.

But this data Even Marshall and fellow gun writer Ed Sanow were putting forth didn't quite jive with other data the FBI was discovering. Very famously, in the "FBI shootout" in Miami in 1986, one of the suspects was hit by a Winchester 9mm 115 grn Silvertip. It was later determined it was an "unsurvivable" wound which would have ultimately been fatal. But the mushroomed bullet was on track to the suspect's heart, yet stopped shy by an inch or two. From this the FBI determined that the "lightweight" bullet "failed" because it had not penetrated deeply enough to destroy the heart, which would have stopped the gun battle much earlier and saved agents' lives. This resulted in the FBI conducting studies afterwards which came to the conclusion that while over-penetration is not ideal, neither is a bullet that penetrates too shallow. From this came the FBI choosing the 10mm.

The FBI's conclusions gave fuel to the fire of Marshall and Sanow's critics. They were essentially hounded out of the gun press and I haven't seen any articles by them in many many years now.

But in my opinion, that was undeserved. The FBI was stating what they believed WOULD happen if caliber X paired with bullet design Y at velocity Z. But Marshall and Sanow were merely reporting what had actually occurred. Actual results on actual people,...not gelatin. (To be clear, I have no problem with using gelatin as a tissue simulant to study and predict effectiveness. But it doesn't hold a candle to shooting people and looking at that data.)

I'm not aware if anyone today is compiling all that one-shot stop data Marshall and Sanow used to. It would be interesting to see if current ammo selection trend expectations match the real world.

But out of all this, one thing many jellow-junkies testing hundreds of ammo permutations have agreed upon is that, when it comes to handguns, there is a certain velocity threshold that must be met before an expanding hollow-point can be expected to set up enough shockwave to have any sort of effect on any tissue disruption and damage likely to have any consequences beyond the crush cavity. That threshold seems to be 1400+ fps. Which many theorize why the .357 125 JHP still today is such a monster for putting people down, despite being small in diameter and "too light" and "doesn't penetrate enough" according to some.

For myself, I will often carry a 9mm 115 Silvertip handload of mine at +P velocities, but I usually carry a 10mm with 135 grn. Nosler JHP screaming at 1400 fps.

If I want to completely penetrate through and through, I'll just carry standard pressure FMJ. But I don't.

[36g]

In the mid-1970's the standard FBI load was a Winchester .38 Special with a 158 gr soft lead hollow point. I believe it may have been a +P but I could be wrong on that. Many local police departments adopted that round.

That being said, the dept that I was on required only issue ammo be used (see above specified round) even though one could carry a .357 revolver. I suspect most officers threw in a speed loader of 125 gr jacketed hollow points in their duty briefcase though...

[Jtarm]

In the mid-1970's the standard FBI load was a Winchester .38 Special with a 158 gr soft lead hollow point. I believe it may have been a +P but I could be wrong on that. Many local police departments adopted that round.

That being said, the dept that I was on required only issue ammo be used (see above specified round) even though one could carry a .357 revolver. I suspect most officers threw in a speed loader of 125 gr jacketed hollow points in their duty briefcase though...

Read all about it:

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...-FBI-Load-quot


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Michael J. Spangler]

Wasn’t some of main issue with Marshall and Sanow that they perpetuated the “stopping power” myth? Leaning into magic bullets and fancy specialty loads. Hydrostatic shock and all of the buzz words of the time?
As far as modern collection of one shot stops I think it’s kind of a moot point. As pointed out in the IWBA articles it’s hard to make a correlation sometimes. There are people that are shot with a 22 in the leg and pass out and people perforated with a 12 gauge and keep fighting.
Some people react psychologically but we need to think of people like animals. You can double lung a deer and it still runs.
There’s more “stopping power” and hydrostatic shock in a .25-06 than any handgun cartridge but he still ran.

You need the physiological off switch.

That right there disproved the reliability of stopping powder and hydrostatic shock.

Meanwhile slaughterhouses use a .22 LR to take down cattle.

Now I may be crazy but I think this “hydrostatic shock” that creates more wounding is BS too. The expansion and contraction of a body due to elasticity is also mirrored in gel. However the temporary cavity means nothing. It’s just that.

People confuse temporary cavity with permanent.

A bullet with more speed can cause more stretch of tissue and if pushed to the elastic limit it can yield and you have a larger permanent cavity. That’s what you see when the block of jello is done jiggling.

Two bullets that give the same permanent cavity and one gives a larger temporary cavity will wound and incapacitate the same.